Christmas TV 2018

Schedules and programme discussion

I agree that there needs to be more comedy. My golden year for comedy was 1996. They may not have all been on Christmas Day but you had Only Fools and Horses, The Vicar of Dibley, Father Ted, The Fast Show and Shooting Stars. This year, you had...Mrs Brown’s Boys and that’s it really. Additionally, it’s fallen into the OFAH habit of having no full series for over 5 years. Like other shows in the schedule, it just does Christmas on auto-pilot.

You've just compared a list of shows that 'may not have all been on Christmas Day' with the list of shows that were on Christmas Day. Hardly a fair comparison!

I don't think all of these are from BBC One, but it's a better comparison. That's also alongside Christmas repeats from the archive, and a whole raft of stuff on iPlayer, seasonal or otherwise.

I take the point that Christmas scheduling is a little different to years gone by, but one can't deny that there's now more choice than ever before. There are still big programmes to get excited about (Torvill and Dean, the Midnight Gang and the ABC Murders were big talking points amongst my friends and family) and if none of those suit, there's a barrage of things old and new on demand. We've never had it better!

Hmm, have we though? More choice doesn’t necessarily mean better quality, although I take both your points about that and the comparison.

I will say, however, that the panel shows and the Romesh Ranganathan thing don’t have huge repeat value. I honestly don’t think they’ll be as fondly remembered as the 1996 examples.

I just get a feeling that the quality of programming isn’t as high, at least in the BBC’s case. A lot feels very lazy and by the numbers. And yes, I’m aware of the obvious cliché of “it’ll never be as good as the old days” and rose-tinted spectacles and whatever, but having never experienced the 70s and the lack of choice with just two channels, I kind of wish I had. And I’m only 30. Eh, go figure.

My golden year for comedy was 1996. They may not have all been on Christmas Day but you had Only Fools and Horses, The Vicar of Dibley, Father Ted, The Fast Show and Shooting Stars.

The Vicar of Dibley and Father Ted both got repeat showings this year, not just on the likes of Gold or More4 but on their original channels (BBC One and Channel 4). Though The Vicar of Dibley is slightly more carbon dated to 1996 with references to the Spice Girls and Oasis.

Indeed, the Vicar of Dibley Christmas special seems to have gotten a repeat on BBC One almost annually in recent years; looking on the Programme page it aired Christmas Eve 2012, Christmas Day 2013, Christmas Eve 2017 and then on the 22nd this year. Managing Christmas Day on BBC One 17 years after the original debut is quite something!

Morecambe & Wise continue to air at Christmas, not in any particular order and it seems to vary to how big a gap they need to fill with them. I do remember one year M&W went out at somewhere before lunchtime on Christmas Day but in recent years they've moved them back towards the "traditional" M&W slots of around 7pm. This year they wheeled out the 1971 Christmas show and bundled it together with the broadcast of two lost episodes found in a former Sierra Leone cinema. They looked stunning

Of course M&W has been endlessly repackaged over the years and if they haven't shown an actual Christmas Special, it'll be a repackaged one with new talking heads.

This year they wheeled out the 1971 Christmas show and bundled it together with the broadcast of two lost episodes found in a former Sierra Leone cinema. They looked stunning

It's amazing what they can do with these beat up old telerecordings (in the clip before of Philip Morris and Michael Aspel watching it the film looked in a terrible state). Very hard to tell it wasn't from a colour videotape to begin with. It looks even better than the Dad's Army restoration from 2008, though I imagine the techniques for restoration have come a long way in those 10 years.

This year they wheeled out the 1971 Christmas show and bundled it together with the broadcast of two lost episodes found in a former Sierra Leone cinema. They looked stunning

It's amazing what they can do with these beat up old telerecordings (in the clip before of Philip Morris and Michael Aspel watching it te film looked in a terrible state). Very hard to tell it wasn't from a colour videotape to begin with. It looks even better than the Dad's Army restoration from 2008, though I imagine the techniques for restoration have come a long way in those 10 years.

Yes, I loved that even the green and red ‘comet tailing’ on the studio cameras still survived. The only point were the colour reconstruction seemed to falter was towards the end of the second programme, greens and blues seemed to get muddled, probably because the studio lighting was a bit too dim on the original recording, and therefore not too much of a decent pedestal for the dot patterns to ‘sit upon’. All in all a stunning restoration.

This year they wheeled out the 1971 Christmas show and bundled it together with the broadcast of two lost episodes found in a former Sierra Leone cinema. They looked stunning

It's amazing what they can do with these beat up old telerecordings (in the clip before of Philip Morris and Michael Aspel watching it te film looked in a terrible state). Very hard to tell it wasn't from a colour videotape to begin with. It looks even better than the Dad's Army restoration from 2008, though I imagine the techniques for restoration have come a long way in those 10 years.

Yes, I loved that even the green and red ‘comet tailing’ on the studio cameras still survived. The only point were the colour reconstruction seemed to falter was towards the end of the second programme, greens and blues seemed to get muddled, probably because the studio lighting was a bit too dim on the original recording, and therefore not too much of a decent pedestal for the dot patterns to ‘sit upon’. All in all a stunning restoration.

Why do the BBC always insist on airing the edited version of the 1971 Christmas Show? Once again they aired the 45 minute version.

But nice to see the Andrew Preview sketch in full, it usually gets clipped just after Previn starts playing Eric's version of the piece. Although I'm surprised that the boom in shot was never noticed at the time, although I guess sets of the time would have lost it in the overscan

Well I kept putting off posting about it because I wanted to get a scan, but I haven't got round to it, so I'll just say now that I love the illustration of New Year's Eve TV presenters on today's Radio Times highlights page. It's like something that you would have seen in years gone by rather than something you'd see now.